Sample Sources
The sources below are those contained in our three curated collections—covering themes of Passover, Gender Roles, and Holocaust Resistance. They represent a fraction of the thousands of sources that will be available when the full site launches in 2024.
Hiding Places: A Father and His Sons Retrace Their Family’s Escape from the Holocaust
[…] I made the mistake of stopping in for Sabbath services. Dutifully I tried praying but was distracted by the dance of light reflecting from people’s wedding rings on the walls. When everyone stood…
Sigmund Freud
To Freud, all forms of religious observance were foolish and superstitious. His wife Martha, on the other hand, took religion much more seriously, as her grandfather had been a prominent rabbi in…
From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro
The life and literary undertakings of Isaac Orobio de Castro are symbolic of the fate and fortunes of the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi diaspora in seventeenth-century western Europe. His passage…
Bodily Discharges and Impurity
The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them:
When any man has a discharge issuing from his member, he is unclean. [ . . . ]
When one with a discharge…
The Notion of a “Jewish Community” in France
The use of the notion of “community” to define French Judaism is not self-evident. On the one hand, if “community” renders the medieval kahal, the concept has a long history and has engendered any…
Woodcut no. 1
Tkhiyes-hameysim (The Resurrection of the Dead) is a dramatic poem by Moyshe Broderzon inspired by medieval Christian “mystery” (or “miracle”) plays that presented bible stories and were performed in…
The Egg That Disguised Itself
Poet and scholar Dan Pagis wrote and illustrated a children’s book about an egg, which, searching for an alternate identity, tries unsuccessfully to disguise itself as a flower, a mushroom, a clock…
Within the Walls
Scene: The living room of the Herming family house. The walls of the home contain valuable paintings by many of the greatest nineteenth-century Danish national romantic painters.State…
Codex Artaud VII
Codex Artaud VII is one of a series of thirty-four scrolls that Nancy Spero based on the writings of Antonin Artaud, a writer and theater director famous for conceptualizing the “Theatre of Cruelty.”…
Medal Commemorating the Opening of the Dutch Jewish Orphanage in Amsterdam
This bronze medal by Jacques Elion commemorates the opening of a Jewish orphanage in Amsterdam. The Hebrew inscription reads: “Orphanage.” It was customary for Jewish communities to issue medals to…
Manifesto
To the remnant whom Hashem calls Guardians of the Torah and Doers of His Word. May the Lord our God be with them and may they rise higher and higher our brethren guardians of the faith of israel! Our…
The Future of American Jews
But a few years ago, before the outbreak of the world-wide European upheaval [World War I], no one even entertained the possibility that a center for the revelation and development of the Jewish…